p. 158 | Be Courteous

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · May 17, 1877

Be Courteous.

PEOPLE do not seem to realize how much they lose by a failure to regard the small courtesies of life. Every day would be filled with new pleasures if those who are intimately associated would study one another's convenience and preference a little more. There are a thousand small acts of kindness that cost nothing but a bit of forethought, which would brighten many a weary hour. The smile or kind word will scarcely ever fail to win a similar response, even from the most indifferent. The average person is incapable of a long siege, when the heart is stormed by such powerful assailants, and must, sooner or later, succumb.

Hearts destined for life-long friendship have grown apart just from a neglect of these small essentials to happiness. They were the first dividing lines, which eventually severed the lives so far asunder. You know at the water-shed of the Alleghanies, it is but a hair's breadth which divides the streams flowing into the Atlantic Ocean from those flowing into the Mississippi and the Gulf. So it is often the merest trifle of a circumstance which decides a person's destiny for sorrow or joy in this world. You cannot be too observant of trifles, for they make up the sum of life. Do not refuse to smile when you know it would make some one feel better; do not be too penurious to spend a few cents when by so doing you could better express the good-will you wish to show. Oh, be sunny, and free, and loving, doing every little kindness in your power, by word, act, and look, and thus show the divine sympathy of Jesus in your life. You may be the means of encouraging some one to start on the road to heaven; you may silently rebuke the said professor who had forgotten the simple, beautiful life of the Saviour, with all its small courtesies and acts of love; you may become much happier in heart, yourself, and grow unconsciously into the generous, thoughtful nature, which you are endeavoring to cultivate. At all events, it is a bit of discipline which you can well afford to practice upon yourself, for considerations of social as well as of spiritual interest.—Methodist Recorder.